


Head Creeps

by neversaydie



Series: Black Dog Blues [1]
Category: Walking Dead, Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Community: twd_kinkmeme, Gen, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-31
Updated: 2013-03-31
Packaged: 2017-12-07 01:46:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/742738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neversaydie/pseuds/neversaydie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I look like a battered wife to you, chief?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Head Creeps

**Author's Note:**

> Title belongs to Alice in Chains. 
> 
> Originally written for a prompt on the kinkmeme and posted here: http://twd-kinkmeme.livejournal.com/4497.html?thread=6508433t6508433

"Daryl? I need to ask you a question."

Rick's voice was cautious, full of a concern he usually saved for Carl, or for the aftermath of injury when they were done getting chased and were licking their wounds. He'd figured getting Daryl alone was the best way to go about asking him a personal question, but now he was sort of regretting being so isolated from the farm and the rest of the camp. He just hoped the other man didn't kick off too badly when he said what he'd come to say.

"Okay." Daryl looked up from where he was carving a new set of arrows and shrugged. Lazy afternoon sun made him squint his eyes at the sheriff, and he looked more peaceful than he had in a long while. "Shoot."

"Look… I don't wanna get presumptuous." Rick sat down next to the hunter on the fallen log and paused when Daryl tensed up at the statement, as predicted. This could get really ugly if he wasn't careful. "You've got a lot of bruises, Daryl."

"Don't everyone?" The reply wasn't as defensive as Rick had expected, Daryl's tone more weary than angry.

"You know what I mean." He pressed on with his line of questioning and Daryl didn't stop him, yet. "You've got bruises from fists, and it's since Merle's got here. Now, if something's going on you need to tell me so that we can deal with it. You don't have to defend him."

There was a long moment of silence before Daryl fixed him with a bemused stare.

"I look like a battered wife to you, chief?" 

Rick immediately cringed at the words, cursing his tactics. The unvoiced challenge was clear in Daryl's tone: did Rick think he couldn't handle himself? He should have known the macho ethos of the Dixon brothers would win out over anything else, including their personal safety. This was a bad idea.

He was just about to make some kind of retort, probably about excusing him for giving a shit, when a deep sigh from the other man cut his words off before they left his throat. Daryl looked younger than usual, when Rick chanced a glance over at him, though his brow was furrowed with indecision. To his surprise, the hunter chewed on his lip nervously before speaking.

"My brother ain't a good man, but he ain't hit me since I got big enough to hit 'im back." He glanced away into the forest again before continuing, avoiding looking at Rick or anything to do with the camp. "Did 'em to myself."

Rick didn't say anything for a minute, trying to process what he'd heard. 

"You… hit yourself?" Daryl, back to staring at the ground and fiddling with the arrow he'd been working on, nodded uncomfortably. "Why?"

"Hell if I know. Not like I ever had money for a fuckin' head doctor."

The shame was rolling off him in waves, thick and tangible in the tense muscle of his back where he clearly wanted to bolt. Rick, not for the first time, was stunned by the difference between how Daryl tried to present himself and how he came across if you paid him more attention than a passing glance. There was something fractured in him, if not shattered altogether. 

"Used to cut myself, 'fore the world went t'shit. Too much risk of infection now. Makin' do."

"It's a stress relief thing?" 

The hunter shrugged again. 

"Guess so. Ma used to do it, but she was nuts." He finally looked Rick in the eye, hesitant, resigned in the low afternoon sunlight. "She was nuts. I'm nuts, Merle's nuts. We all just fucked up in different ways." 

"It's… it's pretty common, these days." He wasn't sure whether he was making things better or worse, but Rick had to say something to try and make the other man look a little less lost. "I mean, not common, but a lot of people do it. We used to see it down at the precinct now and again, people come in all cut up, did it to themselves. Some of 'em were drunk, but others… just like you said. Stress relief."

"Really." He couldn't tell if Daryl was disbelieving or not, as he was holding his face carefully still, keeping his emotions on lock down the way they usually were. 

"Huh. Thought I was just crazy."

"You're not crazy, brother." Rick chanced putting a hand on his shoulder, but Daryl gave an involuntary flinch at the contact and he pulled it away again quickly. 

Daryl had stopped jumping at arguments and wincing at physical contact months ago. That is, until Merle returned, and he'd been backsliding ever since. Quietly, Rick was furious with the elder Dixon brother, for how he affected Daryl along with the rest of the trouble he'd caused in camp, but Merle wasn't his main concern right now. Daryl looked about ready to hurt something, and Rick wasn't sure if he was worried that something was him, or Daryl himself. 

"S'debatable." Daryl drove the heel of his boot into the dirt, loose and dusty from where he'd been worrying at it. His tolerance for polite conversation about his mental state had clearly worn thin. "We done with this heart to heart bullshit or what?"

One last try.

"Your brother messing with your head enough that you hurt yourself, that's just as bad as hitting you." 

Rick tried to get his point across, a different tack with his new information, but he wasn't convinced Daryl could think outside of Merle's influence even if he had the inclination to try. It had been hard enough to get Daryl out of his shell when he was by himself, let alone when his drill sergeant was in a tent a few hundred yards away. 

Even though the redneck wouldn't admit to it, he'd become part of the heart of their group. Rick didn't need any more of his people dying, especially not by their own hand.

"He don't mean it." It wasn't the violent spring to Merle's defence that Daryl usually made, but he was quick to speak up for his brother regardless. 

"Whether he means it or not Daryl." Rick kept his voice calm but firm, knowing if he slipped into his cop voice then Daryl would be on the other side of camp in  
moments. "You don't have to put up with that."

"Don't know any different." It was a rare moment of vulnerability, and Daryl quickly realised his mistake, shrugging and stabbing his half-made arrow into the dirt at his feet viciously. His tone changed, matter of fact now, and Rick knew the conversation was over.

"Ain't just Merle anyway, you take him away and it'd be cus a' somethin' else. And if he don't kick me around, he'll only move on to someone else. I can handle it."

The defiance on his face reminded Rick way too much of the kids hiding under tables or in closets during the domestic violence reports he'd been called out to. Kids watching everything and saying nothing, taking their licks to keep their siblings safe. Kids who'd do anything to keep their family together.

His thoughts must have shown on his face, because Daryl's expression hardened and he shut down like he always did when someone got to showing him anything like pity.

"Daryl-"

"M'I fuckin' speakin' English hoss?" The arrow hit the dirt at Rick's feet this time, and the sheriff knew it was time to disengage. "I said I can fuckin' handle it. I ain't one'a your fuckin' women, go worry 'bout them 'fore you come tryin' t'babysit me."

"Alright, alright." Rick raised his hands between them as he stood, keeping Daryl's glare and clenched fists at arm's length. "I won't say more about it. Just, if you need, I'm here. We all are."

Daryl didn't say anything in reply, keeping his steely glare trained firmly on Rick until the other man turned to go back to camp. Rick walked away, pretending he didn't hear the dull thud of Daryl slamming his knuckles into his thigh in frustration. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and they were all struggling to cope in their own way. Rick didn't want another suicidal member of the group on his hands, so maybe the best thing he could do was to leave Daryl to it, mind his own business like he'd been told. 

Rick heard a loud snap and looked back over his shoulder to see Daryl holding the broken pieces of the arrow he'd been working on. The look in the hunter's eye as he fixated on the jagged points wasn't something Rick could put into words, or that he ever wanted to see again, and it wasn't until he moved to go back up the hill that the spell broke. Daryl's eyes flicked up to him and he flushed, throwing the broken arrow aside irritably and scowling at Rick, snatching up the rest of his kit and stalking off in the other direction. Rick sighed, rubbing his forehead at the beginnings of a migraine. 

He'd have to figure something out. No one else was dying on his watch, not even if they wanted to.


End file.
